US EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at 7:00AM PST for an update. Estimated downtime is one hour.

There will be extended maintenance for European servers.

EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at approximately 9:00PM PST for an update. (Approx. 5:00AM London Time on February 27, 2015). Estimated downtime is 4 hours.

If you spent this weekend wondering whether you were either A) losing your mind or B) going blind from grinding all those Far Seas Ferrin and FSSD Tokens, you’re not alone. I personally experienced a bizarre bug affecting font sizes, specifically an issue where almost all the in-game fonts began to shrink by about 40%. On a 1920×1080 display, EQ2′s fonts are already a little on the smallish side. With this bug, attempting to read quest journal text had me on the phone to my ophthalmologist. Fortunately, after discussion with other players in the Antonia_Bayle.Homeshow channel and through a little bit of testing, I think we’ve gotten to the bottom of what’s causing it.

The new Mission Timers tab in the Quest Journal allows players to see how many hours they’ve got until specific mission timers will reset and they can acquire those quests again. The “Mission” name column in this window seems to have a rather aggressive form of the “ShrinkFontToFit” flag set. If the Quest Journal window happens to be scaled down to its minimum size while the Mission Timers tab is shown and then closed, a cascading change begins to affect nearly ALL in-game text to display it at a reduced size.

Mission Timers at normal size

Mission Timers at reduced size

The effect applies to nearly the entire Character and Guild windows, Quest Details, Item Examine popups, Guild and NPC tags under character names, etc.

A workaround solution for now is to either A) not open the Mission Timers tab, or B) make sure your Quest Journal is sized wide enough to show the Mission Timers text at full size before switching away from the tab/window. If the effect triggers, you can try /load_uisettings, but personally I had to /camp and reload to get back to a sensible font size.

This issue has been passed along to the developers by Ixian who worked out the mechanics of the issue.

Hey players! Do you like collecting various types of Norrathian… like Far Seas Ferrin? Well, then you’re in luck because until11:59PM PST on Sunday, March 1, 2015 you’ll earn DOUBLE alternative currency.

Note: This is in addition to the bonuses to alternative currency that All Access members get every day when they play EverQuest 2. That means that All Access members will get double DOUBLE tokens during this promotion.

This is a great opportunity to stock up on [eq2u]Far Seas Ferrin[/eq2u] or any other alternative currency you’ve been collecting in-game. We’re excited to offer this to our players, and we’ll see you in-game this weekend!

There was an update from Holly on twitter about the event on EU servers needing to be extended, but then it turns out EU servers patched this morning, so NEVAH MYND!

We’re waiting for an official announcement, but we know from a forum post by EQ2 Lead Designer Kander that this weekend will be a Double Currency weekend to make up for the AoM Mission Givers going absent this week.

We’ve confirmed in-game that the event is currently running a wee bit early!

As of now, all players will receive double the normal amount of currency for completing quests or doing in-game content that returns a token or currency of some kind. And yes this stacks with the Double Currency that All Access subscribers already receive, so any quest that rewards Far Seas Ferrin or Far Seas Supply Division Tokens should reward quadruple tokens this weekend!

If past events are any indication, then this event will likely run until Sunday at midnight, but when we have an official announcement, we’ll post it!

]]>http://eq2wire.com/2015/02/26/altar-of-malice-mission-givers-are-back-double-ferrin-this-weekend/feed/16Update Notes: Thursday, February 26, 2015 — UPDATE: Includes NPC Fix!http://eq2wire.com/2015/02/25/update-notes-thursday-february-26-2015/
http://eq2wire.com/2015/02/25/update-notes-thursday-february-26-2015/#commentsThu, 26 Feb 2015 02:15:32 +0000http://eq2wire.com/?p=20674We’re still dead in the water as far as Altar of Malice daily and weekly missions for Overland, Solo, Adv Solo, Heroic, Event Heroic, and Raid content, however there are some other updates happening tomorrow which will be great when we get our NPCs back.

This update does include the fix to the missions but they will not immediately be turned on after the servers come back up. The mission givers should return shortly after all the servers are back up and we have double checked them on live servers.

Ostiophobe will no longer cast Toxic Ruin constantly. Toxic Ruin may now be interrupted.

ITEMS

The Silk Coldain Prayer Shawl and Siren Hair for What Dreams May Come may now be purchased off of the Shady Swashbuckler in Nektulos forest if you are on the stage repair the embroidery on the prayer shawl.

Greater cyan adornments may now be applied to weapons of level 98 or above.

Weapons dropped from Altar of Malice rare heroic mobs may now only accept a single white adornment.

Wands dropped from Altar of Malice rare heroic mobs now have green stats.

MERCENARIES

Alter of Malice: Rare Mercenaries. Quaar the Feral should now hold better agro.

US EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Thursday, February 26, 2015 at approximately 4:00AM PST for an update. Estimated downtime is one hour.

Both the Antonia Bayle and Oasis servers will be unavailable for approximately four hours for additional maintenance.

EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Thursday, February 26, 2015 at approximately 9:00PM PST for an update. (Approx. 5:00AM London Time on February 27, 2015). Estimated downtime is 1 hour.

We are anxiously awaiting a fix and a return of the Altar of Malice mission givers. Until that time, it is not possible to pickup Solo, Adv Solo, Heroic, Event Heroic, Contested, or Raid missions on either a Daily or Weekly basis, not to mention timed overland Solo Missions. A fix seems unlikely today, but we’ll keep hanging on until the solution is found and applied.

It is getting fixed and it is getting fixed right. We would rather get it right the first time and take an extra day to put in the needed testing than to rush it out and potentially make things worse. Sorry for the inconvenience.

and:

It is a new bug and we are getting it fixed asap. It is top priority. We know it sucks that they are missing and we want them to not be missing as well! We will get it resolved as quickly as we can with putting in the testing time to make sure its fixed right so we don’t have to bring them right back down.

Update fromWindstalker on Twitter:

Still looking at some funk with the missions givers for #eq2. We’re planning a Double Ferrin weekend assuming we fix it (and we should).

]]>http://eq2wire.com/2015/02/25/altar-of-malice-mission-givers-fix-in-the-works/feed/4Kotaku: Five Things I Didn’t Get About Making Video Games (Until I Did It)http://eq2wire.com/2015/02/25/kotaku-five-things-i-didnt-get-about-making-video-games-until-i-did-it/
http://eq2wire.com/2015/02/25/kotaku-five-things-i-didnt-get-about-making-video-games-until-i-did-it/#commentsWed, 25 Feb 2015 11:16:53 +0000http://eq2wire.com/?p=20666NOTE: No EQ2-specific news/commentary in this article.

Kotaku has an interesting article from Anthony Burch who used to write for Destructoid and then at Gearbox Software. He reflects on the perception of game design from the outside vs. the reality of being on the inside and why there is such a gulf between the two. I know as I’ve learned more about game development and the maddening complexity of it, I’ve tried to dial back my own vitriol to something a bit more reasonable.

Before I joined Gearbox Software, I worked at Destructoid as a features editor. I worked there from 2006 to 2010 and specialized in highlighting indie games and spewing vitriol at big-budget games I didn’t like. It turns out there were a shitload of things I didn’t know about games development.

I was an atrocious blogger so I’m probably just speaking more to my personal ignorance during that time than anything else, but jeez is everything about game development more complicated and difficult than I thought.

Out of an abundance of caution, all Altar of Malice mission quest givers have been despawned on all EQ2 servers. This started earlier this evening with Skrit, the Tradeskill daily mission giver but is now affecting all mission givers of all gameplay styles.

Update: The in-game MOTD has been updated with this message:

A bug has caused an issue with mission givers in Altar of Malice. All mission givers have been removed from the game. We will have them back as soon as possible.